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Free-to-play is done differently by each developer - and we're a developer that has basically signed ourselves up to all aspects of making free-to-play our own. When we do free to play, we build systems that immediately present players with a choice: time or Platinum. Defeating an RNG god is a privilege many of us have shared. Each year (five and counting) that we add to Warframe's development adds to not only game complexity, but to how Digital Extremes maintains this balance and proposition.

I'll start this post off with a picture (that we'll come back to at the end): Back in November 2016 we colour coded our Sortie Drops to better indicate rarity as seen here:

Here we have Rarity colour conventions to set expectations about what you'd be likely to receive when playing a given Sortie. This was an attempt to display the key value that these datamines provided: a value proposition of chance and time investment, and that's not something we want to take away. This is something we've been actively iterating on, but now we have an urgency to do it faster.

But a visual guide isn't as good as numbers; datamining provided those. That's something we lived with and at some times appreciated until the revealed contents were being hacked, sold, and added to the public build.

What happened yesterday (that was discussed on Reddit) isn't about hiding drop rates for us. We're working on sharing these on our website in a procedural, automatic way (similar to recent Chinese laws, but universally)... but it's not about that. This is about reverse engineering and vectors being opened with the intent to scam trade, forge items, create 3rd party servers and generally leak unfinished content and game internals that can be just as misleading as undisclosed information. Seeing a trade for Primed Streamline take place for thousands of Platinum meant people were about to get caught in the crossfire of tolerated data-mining and malicious use of datamined information. We sought legal counsel when hacking took place and evidence piled up, never before then. We acted to stop the willful and selfish compromising of the game’s code for personal gain. How Digital Extremes decides to share its information is not up to the discretion of lone individuals.

Soon we'll have a webpage that is automated to provide drop information for those who seek it - this screenshot is just proof of concept that we've got something in the works (using real data with effective rarity % in this particular vault!).

We asked you who does it best so we could figure out a quick way (since the urgency is on) to reflect a currently appreciated method of developers giving %'s. Where could we seek wisdom of other developers’ actions to demystify the RNG process and publish drops? The trick is that this behaviour is not strongly or exhaustively exhibited elsewhere in the industry (unless the law demands it in certain regions). There were a few (only one from a game I play), but clearly we have an opportunity here! We want to set a new standard of transparency with our community and give our players further insight into the processes in which they are assigned rewards.

What's next will be the damage stats you can't see (ex. Exalted Weapons) which we may rely on adding to the Wikia (however temporarily) all in the name of empowering our players who value these stats to build as detailed as they want.

Walking the road of free-to-play is something we've been doing alongside our community since day one of Warframe. Each hiccup has led to us being better developers and this is another one of those moments. There is work involved in getting this information up, but stay tuned for the soft launch which we'll announce when it's complete on our end!

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EDIT: June 27/17 @ 11:19 AM
Tenno,

The drop table web page is still being finalized, but a Balor Fomorian has appeared! If you're joining the fight to help protect our Relays, this information may be of use to you:

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Really glad to hear of the progress you're making towards making the numbers clear. For a lot of people numbers don't mean much but there are those, myself included where numbers and unspecified mechanics really shape the opinion we're going to have on something.

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What happened yesterday (that was discussed on Reddit) isn't about hiding drop rates for us. We're working on sharing these on our website in a procedural, automatic way (similar to recent Chinese laws, but universally)... but it's not about that. This is about reverse engineering and vectors being opened with the intent to scam trade, forge items, create 3rd party servers and generally leak unfinished content and game internals that can be just as misleading as undisclosed information. Seeing a trade for Primed Streamline take place for thousands of Platinum meant people were about to get caught in the crossfire of tolerated data-mining and malicious use of datamined information. We sought legal counsel when hacking took place and evidence piled up, never before then. We acted to stop the willful and selfish compromising of the game’s code for personal gain. How Digital Extremes decides to share its information is not up to the discretion of lone individuals.

And VoiD_Glitch had nothing to do with that. All he does is look at information provided client-side - which literally anyone could do just by plunging into the files they download every update - not inject data into accounts or provide the tools necessary to do so. Things that could, say, spoil TennoCon surprises (imagine that timing!), but not break the game.Now instead of unveiling things at Tennocon that were already datamined, you'll be facing a line of customers asking you about your changed stance on datamining and communication.

I'm sure a company full of programmers and video game designers understand the difference between "hacking" and "datamining", but I think your lawyers need a course on this.

15 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We asked you who does it best so we could figure out a quick way (since the urgency is on) to reflect a currently appreciated method of developers giving %'s. Where could we seek wisdom of other developers’ actions to demystify the RNG process and publish drops? The trick is that this behaviour is not strongly or exhaustively exhibited elsewhere in the industry (unless the law demands it in certain regions). There were a few (only one from a game I play), but clearly we have an opportunity here! We want to set a new standard of transparency with our community and give our players further insight into the processes in which they are assigned rewards.

If you look at a little game like, oh, World of Warcraft, they not only maintain a genial relationship with dataminers, but they openly support such sites and direct people to them as primary information sources, which the publisher doesn't have to waste its own resources on.

Websites like Wowhead and MMO-Champion frequently datamine and discuss information on new releases early on during test phases, and base their business models on disseminating information on stats, locations and drop rates to players. Not only does this hype upcoming content, but it adds to the feedback process - people can see values that may be too strong or weak, and this allows for discussion of adjustments before game-breaking changes are added to the live game. It also allows players to start crafting builds and strategy guides before they get their hands on new content - something Warframe players can otherwise only do with the limited information that gets sieved through devstreams.(Can't even argue this is because WoW is a bigger numbers game than Warframe, since we're talking about drop rates and ability/alt-fire stats here.)

And yes, frequently they even datamine things like dialogue and minor spoilers. People still play the content for themselves, and just as frequently, Blizzard just loads in placeholders on massive spoilers until their scripts are finished.

While exact numbers on drop rates are not usually datamined, these sites are given leeway to spread addons that track such information as players go through the game, allowing rough estimates to be generated over time. Since Warframe doesn't allow addons, and such a method would be inaccurate as more items are added to the same drop tables, an extended search via datamining has been the only viable alternative up to now.

15 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

We're working on sharing these on our website in a procedural, automatic way (similar to recent Chinese laws, but universally)...

Soon we'll have a webpage that is automated to drop provide information for those who seek it - this screenshot is just proof of concept that we've got something in the works (using real data with effective rarity % in this particular vault!).

What's next will be the damage stats you can't see (ex. Exalted Weapons) which we may rely on adding to the Wikia (however temporarily) all in the name of empowering our players who value these stats to build as detailed as they want.

Part of the problem with this is that the in-game resources are decidedly unhelpful when it comes to these kinds of information. Adding these things to a website is just a bandaid fix to this.

Not only do players have to dig around through the Codex for basic information like what planets a relic drops on, but Warframe entries are 90% flavor text that don't tell you the hidden interactions programmed into each ability, like Oberon's dependence on Hallowed Ground, or that you can pop Snow Globes using Freeze, or that you can roll out of Banish. (We asked for synergy and a skill ceiling to these frames, not effects only disseminated through the top X% of players.) The only reason players know about those right now is because we heard it on a devstream or caught the patch notes the day it came out, and continued to spread it via word of mouth.
And god help you if you don't have every enemy scanned, or you'll have no idea where the name-brand weapon parts or mods you need drop. There's a tutorial on how to capture enemies for the Sanctuary, but there isn't one on how to add enemies to the Codex, or even to use consumables.
In fact, I would hazard a guess that most starting players don't know what the heck the Codex is good for because nothing in-game points you to it.

Combined with the use of an arbitrary graph- or color-based system (RIP colorblind peeps), the in-game resources are, frankly, designed to give you the absolute minimum.

Not to mention that an updated Profile video has yet to be released for Oberon, and Limbo's didn't even mention his passive - which, frankly, mitigates my faith in DE's ability to keep players updated with both accurate and thorough information.

Bear in mind, most players don't look at the wiki, or the forums. They will continue flying blind in such a manner until there is an intuitive way to locate this information in-game.

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What's next will be the damage stats you can't see (ex. Exalted Weapons) which we may rely on adding to the Wikia (however temporarily)

I hope it is temporary as I would much prefer to see this type of info in the game. Also things like what the syndicate procs do, the data on things like cloud size on weapons like torid or pox, how their damage works.

There are a lot of stats that are simply left out of the game and forces players to datamine or mostly just guess and experiment which isn't really playing, its discovering info that should be there from the start.

Do not forget vaulted relics getting labled in game, that'd be great too.

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As someone who has invested untold hours maintaining tables on the wiki, I vigorously welcome DE's participation in making sure that the information disseminated to players is accurate and accessible. Openness with players means that more time can be spent actually playing the game, which is to everyone's benefit.

I'm hoping that increasing the amount of information conveyed to players (oh god, are we actually talking about this really happening?) will involve reviewing and standardizing how information is displayed in the game client. Because right now, there are no standards at all. I've made feedback threads to this effect (see here and here), but it's obviously not been a priority.

My suggestion/request: it's 2017, and I know that the impulse will likely be to make the presentation of data as slick as possible. It is my hope that whatever data is presented will also be made available in a simple text format, for those of use who tend to process it for manipulation elsewhere (the wiki, a spreadsheet, etc). I hate having to key data that I could be copying-and-pasting instead.

Edited June 22, 2017 by pauli133

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Soon we'll have a webpage that is automated to drop provide information for those who seek it - this screenshot is just proof of concept that we've got something in the works (using real data with effective rarity % in this particular vault!).

Any plan to also add this detailed drop information directly into the game, like the codex? While a webpage with this information would be a nice quick fix I would prefer having access to this information in the game.

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Any plans of making all this data available as json or something thats easily machine readable so the community can make their own viewers for it (websites, discord bots etc). This will most likely happen sooner or later anyway (see trials leaderboard vs 3rd party sites that track them). It would be nice to keep that in mind when designing that site / service.

Edited June 22, 2017 by Pegasy

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Free-to-play is done differently by each developer - and we're a developer that has basically signed ourselves up to all aspects of making free-to-play our own. When we do free to play, we build systems that immediately present players with a choice: time or Platinum. Defeating an RNG god is a privilege many of us have shared. Each year (five and counting) that we add to Warframe's development adds to not only game complexity, but to how Digital Extremes maintains this balance and proposition.

I'll start this post off with a picture (that we'll come back to at the end): Back in November 2016 we colour coded our Sortie Drops to better indicate rarity as seen here:

Here we have Rarity colour conventions to set expectations about what you'd be likely to receive when playing a given Sortie. This was an attempt to display the key value that these datamines provided: a value proposition of chance and time investment, and that's not something we want to take away. This is something we've been actively iterating on, but now we have an urgency to do it faster.

But a visual guide isn't as good as numbers; datamining provided those. That's something we lived with and at some times appreciated until the revealed contents were being hacked, sold, and added to the public build.

What happened yesterday (that was discussed on Reddit) isn't about hiding drop rates for us. We're working on sharing these on our website in a procedural, automatic way (similar to recent Chinese laws, but universally)... but it's not about that. This is about reverse engineering and vectors being opened with the intent to scam trade, forge items, create 3rd party servers and generally leak unfinished content and game internals that can be just as misleading as undisclosed information. Seeing a trade for Primed Streamline take place for thousands of Platinum meant people were about to get caught in the crossfire of tolerated data-mining and malicious use of datamined information. We sought legal counsel when hacking took place and evidence piled up, never before then. We acted to stop the willful and selfish compromising of the game’s code for personal gain. How Digital Extremes decides to share its information is not up to the discretion of lone individuals.

Soon we'll have a webpage that is automated to provide drop information for those who seek it - this screenshot is just proof of concept that we've got something in the works (using real data with effective rarity % in this particular vault!).

We asked you who does it best so we could figure out a quick way (since the urgency is on) to reflect a currently appreciated method of developers giving %'s. Where could we seek wisdom of other developers’ actions to demystify the RNG process and publish drops? The trick is that this behaviour is not strongly or exhaustively exhibited elsewhere in the industry (unless the law demands it in certain regions). There were a few (only one from a game I play), but clearly we have an opportunity here! We want to set a new standard of transparency with our community and give our players further insight into the processes in which they are assigned rewards.

What's next will be the damage stats you can't see (ex. Exalted Weapons) which we may rely on adding to the Wikia (however temporarily) all in the name of empowering our players who value these stats to build as detailed as they want.

Walking the road of free-to-play is something we've been doing alongside our community since day one of Warframe. Each hiccup has led to us being better developers and this is another one of those moments. There is work involved in getting this information up, but stay tuned for the soft launch which we'll announce when it's complete on our end!

The Datamining has been given a rather hefty C&D after Streamline Prime and Umbra Prime Excal had been hacked into the game. Til that point DE seemed to have a 'we're not going to talk about it but we won't do anything' attitude. That something should be done to prevent further hacking is not a thing I will argue against. I come from Phantasy Star Online. I remember that game had hacking so bad that sega pulled GM support and blamed the community for the lack of updates even as the north america client fell further and further behind japan in terms of updates. I come from FPS's where you would have sudden magical lag rubberbanding when someone is losing so they instantly become near impossible to hit and you end up dead from an impossible shot through a wall.

Hacking is a fun sapping experience be it PvP or PvE.

However looking at the droptables pre-datamining (Update 9?) show drop rates that are like 0.05% c(and here I thought war parts and vengeful revenent's 2% drop rates were horrifyingly bad. Wow.) I want to trust DE because I see DE as a collective of people rather than a faceless corporation. I am as outgoing as I am because while I cannot expect everything to go my way, I can be fairly sure that someone that can make descisions will see what i have to say regardless on if it is acted upon. If this were an EA or Ubisoft game I wouldn't bother since it took the combined effort of thousands if not millions in a huge coordinated PR disaster that was Mass Effect 3's Ending to get change to happen. That is something A Guy cannot do alone. As much as i lament how loud we seem to need to shout to be heard here... there is still that chance at being heard. So hear me now.

Coloured rarity names do not make comprehensive drop tables. That gold mod? Does it drop 22% of the time, or 40%? That gold mod? Does it drop 10% of the time, 2%? Having pretty bars beside the relic drops during refinement are equally unhelpful for the same reasons. Then there are instances where items showed up on the wrong rotation compared to what patch notes have said, or a case when a plat paid kubrow egg contained chances of kubrows that the found eggs didn't. The Nidus rotation C thing on infested salvage? In spite of how it seemed, we could go to the drop table charts and look and see that 'oh... well that's actually fair.'

I get not wanting tennocon things spoiled. I get that you don't want quest things spoiled. However there needs to be a middle ground.

We wouldn't have riven changes without the datamines. We wouldn't have a 1 - 5 like we do now. We might not even have the uninformative faint/neutral/strong either.

I'm not saying the whole of the game needs to be mineable. Some obfuscation should be done to prevent players from injecting new data in so we can't give ourselves literally unobtainable things. However I do not trust DE to be honest about things. If they were willing to show us drop tables in game for relics, or mods, or whatever. They would have done so by now. That they havent' shows that they don't see it as a thing that needs happening without us pushing for it to need to exist.

And for those going 'oh well go to the wikia' the wikia depends on datamining for its data. The wikia is not an official DE thing. It is a fan construct updated as best as the fans know how and are able to. It is not as informative as it could be, and sometimes it has outdated information. So to hear the official response being 'well go to the wikia' sounds really :clem:ing hollow and myopic. Hearing the official response going 'well we color the names ins't that good enough?' No... no it is not. I am sorry but it is not. IT shows the rarity, but does not give us actionable information.

Look at City Of Heroes. It had vague indicators instead of hard numbers, and often would tweak numbers hidden behind those indicators without player knowledge or ability to change playstyels or farming methodology to compensate.

I realise Void is seventeen and a US citizen so likely can't be hired. However it would go a long way to fixing this mess by having someone like him on the team who's sole job is to datamine and share info DIRECTLY FROM THE FILES. Someone who works with the wikia team to make sure that is updated, and someone who can make judgement calls based on what the developers and the business side says is harmful and what isn't to put out into the wild.

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What's next will be the damage stats you can't see (ex. Exalted Weapons) which we may rely on adding to the Wikia (however temporarily) all in the name of empowering our players who value these stats to build as detailed as they want.

Wish we could just move forward and acknowledge that there's so many weapon exclusive or weapon only mods that doesn't work with exalted that we could start working on having proper modding for those weapons.

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Neat. Considering how many stats/mechanics/etc aren't explicitly stated, I would expect this sort of thing to take a while to get up and running. I, for one, am willing to be patient. However, I'd like to offer a bit of advice: